July 2009 Archives

I was at a party once and (G. Gordon) Liddy put his hand over a candle, and
he kept it there. He kept it right in the flame until his flesh was
burned. Somebody said, "What's the trick?" And Liddy said, "The trick
is not minding."

Deep Throat - All The President's Men

I'm not suggesting by the title of this entry and the above quote that Ben Silverman is as nuts as G. Gordon Liddy.
Far from it. I personally believe he is too big of a pussy to even
come close to burning his hand in a flame. But there is a certain
recklessness (and his bizarre relishing in this recklessness) that
makes the comparison apt. It's almost like he wants you to call him a
"hard-partying, womanizing, break the rules kind of guy." That's his
badge of honor. And it works for most rock stars and even George Clooney - but not Ben.

I
know for a fact that a few drugs and a good amount of booze has helped
to shape some of the greatest content ever produced. Can you imagine
jazz evolving as it did without the use of drugs? Can you imagine Hemingway or Faulkner or Fitzgerald writing
sober? Can you imagine the filmmaking of 1970s without any chemicals
to get through the long nights? Luckily we don't have to.

There
have been many successful executives in the past (and some currently)
that have partied just as hard - but you don't hear much about their
social lives because they do their jobs and hit their numbers. When
you fail, everyone starts looking very closely at how you spend your
day.

Success would have saved Mr. Silverman and he would have been allowed to do whatever he wanted. (And Jeff Zucker probably would have encouraged him to continue to do whatever it was he was doing.) But he failed.

Ben Silverman was an absolute disaster at NBC.
Practically everything he touched turned to shit (the list of expensive
flops is long and you most likely have read about them elsewhere) - and
yet, here he is, partying his way to the top of another company.

In my opinion, Barry Diller has done his shareholders a great disservice by letting this failure control a $100 million fund to bridge "the gap between traditional television and the internet".

Sounds
like an amazing idea, Barry! Somebody has got to figure out that
puzzle, I suppose. And based on all the executive talent out there,
you picked... Ben Silverman.

But, stupid me, I keep forgetting, based on press releases, Ben Silverman
is a great innovator and the absolute right man to bridge that 'gap'
(right man, that is, if advertisers are ready to party like animals,
miss meetings, sleep late and never see a project through to the end).

But let me give credit where credit is due. Mr. Silverman is a guy who seamlessly integrated advertiser's products into storylines of reality and scripted shows such as The Restaurant and The Biggest Loser. Wow, was that restaurant cooking with ACTUAL FOOD? Was that biggest loser drinking a Gatorade? I'm glad Mr. Silverman
came up with the idea to let the biggest losers hydrate themselves.
That's a stroke of genius. The contestants should be very glad he
didn't cut the deal with Starbucks - the biggest losers would have then had to hydrate with Venti Lattes.)

Note to Ben: Ed McMahon sat next to a dog eating Alpoon The Tonight Show and it sold a lot of Alpo. Charlie McCarthy (Edgar Bergen's ventriloquist puppet) sold a ton of Ex-lax
on the radio and he's a freakin' puppet that can't possibly know what
it's like to be constipated! Products sell because people want the
products - not because a Ford Truck was seamlessly integrated into a webisode about a cop and a hooker.

There have been great innovations in advertising (the banner ads to the left, sides and bottom of this blog for one) - but Ben Silverman hasn't come up with one (no matter how hard he tries to say that he has). Mr. Silverman has
obviously gotten very lucky in life and now has $100 million to play
with, which will buy a lot of entertainment for himself and his daily
girlfriends as he listens to pitches for web series about hot tits and
Vegas fraternities. I wish him all the best trying to sell those to Coke.

About Jill Kennedy

Manka Bros. (and the Manka Business Channel) hired her (for a very low sum) to cover the world of media (not the world of Medea) in her own words without corporate interference.

About Medea

Medea was a real bitch from classical mythology - as most famously dramatized by Euripides.

She was a sorceress and wife of Jason, whom she assisted in obtaining the Golden Fleece. When Jason deserted her, she chopped up their children. One could say, Medea acted as rationally as a major media company.